


A New Constellation

by saturnsfather



Category: The Bastard Crew
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Mechanisms universe, Non-Human Character, corners can split their body up into pieces so..., corners is not human is not mortal and Never Has Been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 03:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20668763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnsfather/pseuds/saturnsfather
Summary: Names don't mean much, when you really think about it.





	A New Constellation

**Author's Note:**

> please welcome the newest addition(?) to the crew, Corners, aka Faces, aka Mtu, aka What The Fuck Are You, aka [REDACTED]

They didn’t have a name. 

Did they ever have a name? Not sure. They don’t remember having one, and no one’s ever called them the same thing as another one before _ Cassandra _ . It was the little one who decided on it, the one whose name sounded like dots from a computer screen, with an irritated look and a slap on the wrist,  _ Get out of here, Corners, I’m trying to work _ . 

They had. 

The others seemed to just catch on, the nickname falling from their mouths almost effortlessly. It was... uncomfortable at first, to have a name. To have something Sure about them. They hid for a while, swallowed parts of people who found them. It didn’t seem to do anything, no one seemed to mind, beyond the initial  _ oh come on, give that back, I need that _ . In fact, the little one seemed almost happier when they watched them from a vent with one eye, the rest of their body somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship. 

They came back, of course. It didn’t take long. The curiosity was far too potent for that. 

The tall dark thin one, the fragile one, he called them Mtu. He’d said it with such an odd voice, staring at them with curious, cautious eyes and a sad tilt of his head. They had just nodded at him in response. Whatever he wanted to do was okay. He was pretty, after all, and very interesting. And they didn’t want to upset him. He was the only one that called them any different, and they liked that. They spent a lot of time with Anansi. 

Ikarus didn’t call them anything. Ikarus rarely said anything at all, and that was just fine. Ikarus was tall and thin and had sharp teeth and was always sad and Ikarus was  _ amazing _ . Ikarus seemed surprised when they bit him back the first time, then bit them again, softer. Ikarus was amazing. 

Jonny had always called them Faces. 

_ Hey there, Faces. Haven’t seen one of your mugs around in a while. Fancy a scrap? _

_ Get a new one? Don’t recognize that look, Faces. Could know your walk anywhere, though. I’d stay back if I were you, that there’s highly explosive.  _

_ Ah, Faces, lay off with the teeth, will ya? _

They liked Jonny. They missed Jonny. 

Nobody else liked Jonny very much, except Phantomness. And Phantomness didn’t like them talking to her. After the first few hundred times being stabbed, one eventually gets the idea, and stops sneaking up on people while they're working. But no one else was willing to talk about Jonny, and everyone else got such Bad looks on their single faces when they brought him up. So they stopped bringing him up. Bad looks were not good. 

Bad feelings were not good. 

Sometimes they thought they remembered another name. A name spoken in a high, singing voice, like ashes on one’s tongue,  _ This will hurt a lot, darling, don’t move. Oh, Asteris, let’s see what really makes you tick, shall we? _

They didn’t like that name. That name made their insides do weird things, and sometimes it made their insides become their outsides. When that name came to their mind, they always split, and it sometimes took days for the pieces to find each other again. And Fara always yelled when she found a hand crawling in a corridor, or a tongue sitting in the vents. And they didn’t like when she yelled. 

Fara called them Stowaway sometimes. They find that reasonable. After all, how were they to know? Maybe that’s what they were, a stowaway on the ship from one of the many ports between the stars. It wasn’t like they cared enough to know. They were here now, and did how they got here really matter?

Anansi says so. Anansi gives them an odd look as he moves between ship screens, avoiding touching the leg they’d thrown across the room.  _ Yes, it matters, _ he says, tapping the screen twice before leaning against the wall with a sigh.  _ It matters to some people. For some people that kind of thing is life or death. _

They don’t know what that means. They tell him so. 

_ Of course not, _ he mutters under his breath, kicking away a finger which wriggles back across the floor towards its body.  _ Mortality isn’t something someone who was never mortal _

_ can comprehend, is it? _

They shake their head and tell him no, they know what mortality is. They know some things, like some humans, and animals, those end. Mortality is when something has an end, right? That’s why the ones on the ship, they and the crew, are all  _ im _ mortal. Because they have no end. 

Anansi’s expression leaves a bitter taste in their mouth, a subtle buzz in their ears.  _ Yes, _ he says.  _ We have no end.  _

So why does how they got here matter?

_ Because mortality, even if it’s temporary, leaves...certain habits. Certain fears. And while death may no longer cause any grief, pain still haunts us all.  _

They don’t understand that either. They don’t say that, because Anansi is being very nice today, and also because he seems sad, and the confusion gnaws at the corners of their mind. So they don’t ask, and instead sit quietly and patiently as he continues to work. 

When people called their names, it took several moments to have any affect. Names were such odd things after all, and for someone like them, responding to a word that meant little more to them than any other always took a little bit of time. They got faster eventually, of course, especially when not responding to a calling of their name got their upper half blown into pieces by a gun blast. 

That was very rude, and very inconvenient. They swallowed the one responsible. They only got to keep his arm, in the end, but that was okay. Fara seemed pleased, and though she didn’t smile, her insides did. 

That made them smile. 

They swallowed a lot of things, these days. Not that they hadn’t before, but now they got to swallow  _ new _ things,  _ interesting _ things. So many things found in so many places. They took those things and made them part of their insides, reworked them and remade them into something new to keep their form compact. They lost pieces so often now, to be honest. So many times caught in the blast, or thrown out an airlock, or shot or sliced or trapped in a little tiny box with no doors. 

So they made new pieces. 

Anansi once said that humans (and he said that word with a laugh) apply names to faces, and that it made sense for them to have no name if they had no face. They’d argued no, they had a face, they had many faces,  _ see, look, I can put a new one on here- _ He’d taken the spare away from them with an annoyed expression. 

_ No true face _ , he’d replied, tossing the face into the waste compactor opening. 

They’d cocked their head. True? What did he mean?

Anansi had sighed.  _ Nevermind.  _

That was annoying. People not explaining things was annoying. They swallowed his finger and fled into the vents to sulk as he cursed outside. 

They replaced their face less often after that. Maybe it made the crew uncomfortable. Maybe the crew needed to see the same face, as much as it made them itch. Itch at the edges of the plating, itch away pieces until just the face was left and then the pieces reformed wires and skin and flesh and bone in a different place. 

It still replaced it. Change was the only constant, after all. 

They’d heard that somewhere, probably. 

A long time ago.   



End file.
